Jefe’s Tex Mex BBQ brings out big flavors with a tiny smoker

You line up in front of the trailer and settle in for a wait. You may need to stand in line five minutes or 20 minutes, depending on how crowded it is. When it’s your turn, you order brisket and sausage and banana pudding at the window, then wait another few minutes for your food. You then have a choice: eat at a picnic table shaded by umbrellas and trees, or take your food into the Republic Street Bar.

If you’re having a barbecue deja vu moment, you’re in the right spot. For many barbecue fans, the small lot next to Republic Street Bar in the Near Southside area is hallowed turf. This is the exact same spot where local ’cue sensation Heim BBQ rose to fame, in a trailer similar to the one that sits there now.

Parked there for the past six weeks, Jefe’s Tex Mex BBQ is picking up where Heim’s trailer left off. But instead of riding the coattails of what has come before, owners Michael “Jefe” Ruiz and his wife, Pam, are doing things a little differently, with more often than not generally satisfying results.

For purists, there are barbecue standards such as brisket and potato salad but also a handful of dishes that combine barbecue with Tex-Mex: tacos stuffed with smoked carnitas, quesadillas overflowing with brisket, charro beans studded with sausage.

Smoking is done on a very small scale here, in a simple offset barrel smoker that Michael fills with post-oak wood and fires up with newspapers — a far cry from the commercial behemoths that many pitmasters use.

The tiny smoker yielded strong results on a three-meat plate ($13.95), made up of brisket, sausage and carnitas, along with sides of charro beans and potato salad.

Brisket, which Michael says is smoked up to 16 hours, is served lean and fatty. While lean had a prominent smoke ring and a nice layer of crust, I preferred the moist, whose flavor had more personality and dimension, thanks to veins of fat that snaked through it. Lean wasn’t bad but it was a tad dry, a good excuse to sample the Ruizes’ sweet and smoky housemade sauce.

Sausage, a pork and beef mix, was of the commercial variety but wielded a likable, rich flavor and snappy skin. There wasn’t a lot of it, though, compared to the other two meats.

Instead of ribs, Jefe’s serves a variation of carnitas, consisting of bite-size portions of smoked pork coated in a dry rub of paprika, sugar and chile powder. It took a few bites for me to warm up to them but eventually I grew to appreciate the complexity of the rub and the texture of the meat, whose chewiness was broken up by sporadic tufts of silk-tender fat.

Neither the yellow potato salad nor the slightly tangy coleslaw went beyond the norm. Tricked out with bits of sausage, bacon and jalapeños, the charro beans, however, were outstanding.

During another visit, I tried the brisket quesadillas ($7). Fusions of Tex-Mex and barbecue can be disastrous but there was a lot to like in this dish, from the generous portion of chopped brisket to the sturdy flour tortillas to the mule-kick of the housemade salsa.

Banana pudding ($3) had a good, firm texture and pleasantly sweet flavor. If only the vanilla wafers hadn’t been so soggy.

Jefe’s isn’t exactly on the same level as Heim, but with a personality of its own, it’s obvious that it’s not trying to be.

This story was originally published August 16, 2017 at 3:49 PM with the headline "Jefe’s Tex Mex BBQ brings out big flavors with a tiny smoker."